my 200SX

[Jon]

This is going to be long-winded, but I thought I'd share my project. My 
200SX has almost 180k on the clock and for a while I'd been thinking it 
had bad valve seals. I decided to replace them and have a little 
cylinder head fun while I was at it. I read Mike K's article on 
sentra.net about porting/polishing and its the best info I have been 
able to find on the web. I bought a dremel at Sears and made a big mess 
in my office (my wife loved that). When I got it back together... the 
thing ran great. For about 200 miles anyway. After that, the engine 
started sucking oil with a vengeance. It turns out what I thought was 
valve seals was rings all along. I found a machinist I trusted and had 
him do a rebuild, with some special things. He said everything in the 
engine was in great condition, save the cylinders. There was 0.007" 
clearance piston to bore, the bores were badly tapered and the oil rings 
were stuck to the pistons. I had him balance everything, 1mm overbore 
pistons, new oil pump, timing chain, bearings etc. He also did some work 
to the valves and seats I didn't have the tools for. I sent the pistons 
and bearings to Swain for low friction coating. Nissan coated the crowns 
of those pistons from the factory, so I didn't mess with that. I have 
had the engine back in the car for about 1500 miles... and all I have to 
say is, holy crap! This engine has so much more power than ever before, 
gets better gas mileage and runs smoother. It almost sounds like I have 
an intake on it when I get a heavy foot (it is stock, not even a K&N). 
My pocket book is a little sore, but I only have 1 regret... I wish I'd 
done this to a G20. On my '92 SER I did cams, header, intake, pulleys, 
lightened flywheel, JDM engine etc... but all of the above didn't make a 
difference like cylinder head work. Also, with everything I put on the 
SER it seemed like you gave up something, like peace and quiet or torque 
to get more power. This GA16 gained everywhere. Even my wife noticed a 
big difference... and she's not exactly sensitive. I really thank Mike K 
for the excellent article on cylinder head work. Everything he said was 
on the money... except don't do it on a tired engine unless you plan on 
doing a full rebuild. If anyone wants contact info for the machinist I 
used, email me off list. His name is Denny Willey. I'm in PA, so it 
didn't seem practical to send my engine to JWT or DPR. I couldn't be 
happier with Denny's work.

Jon Davis